Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Pittsburgh Public Schools had a community meeting last week at Westinghouse

Last week there was a community meeting at Westinghouse High School's library with written questions delivered to Mr. Lopez about the Excellence for All plan for high schools.

A big school board vote is due in the next week or so. They'll be with a multi-prong plan to do many things to the landscape of the schools.

- close Peabody HS

- shift Westinghouse High School to include grades 6, 7 and 8 to go along with grades 9, 10, 11 and 12.

- make the classrooms at Westinghouse split by gender so boys are in one class and girls in the other, most of the time. In the Vo Tech or CTE classes, they will be co-ed. And, we expect that some of the higher level classes will be co-ed too. But, time will tell.

- move the IB school, now at Reizenstein, called Pgh Obama, into the building at Highland and East Liberty Blvd known at Peabody. This move is slated for the fall of 2012.

- keep the robotics at Peabody, even when the school is devoted to IB.

- move the kids that go to Peabody into U-Prep or Westinghouse, based upon their address or upon a preference of avoidance of single-gender classrooms.

- Make one school that was recently made into a K-8 back to a K-5 so that the ones in grades 6, 7 and 8 can go to the Westinghouse school.

- Mess with another elementary school too.

- and a couple of other things.

Well, some of the meeting was captured on my video camera. That footage is being uploaded.

Part 1:

Part 1 but hosted on Viddler.com:

Part 2:

Part 2 but hosted on Viddler.com:

Highlights of part 1 and 2 for interested folks geared to Pgh Obama's move to Peabody and my question of sports fitting into the high school facilities with the arrival of middle schools as well.